Meet the Other Half of Ansel Elgort's New EDM Duo

Both Ansel Elgort and Pierce Fulton have impressive careers as DJs on their own, but they decided to combine their skills for something extra special. The two friends and New York City roommates just released their first official track under their collaboration name Shirts & Skins, and it’s everything we ever hoped it would be.

We sat down with Pierce and chatted about their "Genius of Time" remix, making music in their Williamsburg abode, and what we can expect next. See what he had to say below.

Teen Vogue: How did you get into New York City’s electronic music scene coming from Vermont?

Pierce Fulton: It’s funny because Vermont isn’t known for electronic music at all. I had a friend in high school who was an exchange student from Venezuela and he was really into EDM. I had never heard of it before. I was in a few different bands at the time playing classic rock and blues, but after he showed me some mixes, I thought it was so interesting. I tried to learn everything about it.

Teen Vogue: When did you make the move to New York?

PF: When I was ending my sophomore year of college. Going into junior year, my agent asked me if I wanted to go back to school and do my music on the weekends, or take a tour for the next month. I did the tour, and directly after I moved to Brooklyn. I grabbed all my stuff from school and had my first apartment when I was 20.

Teen Vogue: How do you incorporate your former styles of music into your EDM tracks?

PF: I was just working on a new song, and it’s fun to be able to put in pieces of history from what I’ve played throughout my life. It might just be a little influence, like a guitar riff that’s a little bluesy in a melodic dance song.

Teen Vogue: How do you move on from huge hits like "Kuaga"?

PF: It’s crazy—it still gets played on Sirius Radio like three times a day. But I think the tough part is convincing people to take music that’s a little different. I don’t want to do what I already did again. If I kept doing that, nothing would change or evolve. It’s hard to get more of my more unique music into the same kind of hands.

Teen Vogue: What’s something people don’t know about you and your music?

PF: People just assume everyone has really fancy studios. I just have a little ring-ding set-up in my basement. I’m obviously not getting the same kind of quality I could in a big studio, but I’ll get by doing things myself. It’s really cool that we’re in the day and age you can do everything yourself and make it sound like you’ve hired all these people. It’s funny when I’m asked by audio engineers what kind of mic I used to record my music, and I can respond saying, ’Oh, it’s a USB mic that goes directly into my computer.’

Teen Vogue: How did you and Ansel meet?

PF: He sent me music way back in the day—like three or four years ago. I get music sent to me all the time, but I remember because he sent a really nice email. He told me he thought I would know his brother’s friend—he’s a kid who actually works at my management company. His brother and him were in the same fraternity in college, and that’s kind of how Ansel and I got introduced. We started hanging out and decided to move in together.

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Teen Vogue: Is it nice having that support with you both producing EDM music, or does it make things hard since you live together?

PF: I mean, there are ups and downs obviously when we’re both trying to make music at the same time. But we kind of have our own little spaces and it’s cool because we help each other with a lot of our stuff. It’s a simple matter of me going to get a coffee and listening to what he’s working on upstairs and telling him to try something, and vice versa.

Teen Vogue: What was it like producing your first track as Shirts & Skins with Ansel?

PF: It was really fun. This project is really a way for us to have a good time and try out anything we want, so it was quite a refreshing experience. I’ve always loved house-tech and house-groovy music in general, and the fact that Ansel has a similar affection for the style is why we started the project in the first place. I’d never be able to put out a song like this as Pierce Fulton, so it’s amazing to have a new avenue for music.

Teen Vogue: How long did it take to put "Genius of Time" together, and what was your process like?

The overall theme for Shirts & Skins is very bootleg and last-minute with a rough-around-the-edges vibe. Everything we do from the shows, the music, the visual aspect, and artwork is all super fast and spontaneous. We’ve actually been playing small venues around New York City for about a year now as Shirts & Skins, but never announced anything until the special guest performance at my Webster Hall show last month.

The way a Shirts & Skins show happens will usually be a text from Ansel like "Yo, you around tonight?" and boom, we have a show that night. I love that. It makes things so much more fun and risky and weird. As for the music, we approach it in a really cool way. Instead of starting fresh on stuff together, we send pretty complete ideas to each other and say "Good for Shirts & Skins?" Then the other will clean up the last few bits or change a few things. It’s cool because it’s sort of a game of ping pong with songs and ideas instead of a completely group effort.

The "Genius of Time" remix was made in an afternoon. An original track we have coming up has been an old idea I made about two years ago that we’re refreshing right now. Sometimes we’ll take old ideas of ours that have been around for a while and put a new spin on them, or we’ll start fresh and work really quickly—it all depends.

Teen Vogue: What was your favorite part of the fans’ reactions after "Genius of Time" was released?

The fact that tech-house and house—in the classic sense—is not a very commercially-appealing genre. I don’t mean that in a negative way because I love the genre to death—I just mean the younger generation isn’t so quick to jump on this semi-underground stuff. To see the younger generation from Ansel’s pull and my listeners that primarily listen to me for my melodic dance music appreciate something totally different from us has been so fun. We can’t wait to keep trying out new styles within this groovy realm and see where we can go.

Check out Pierce and Ansel’s first official release as Shirts & Skins below.